Posted Friday December 11th 2009
by Stuart Evers

Crime is a genre that sits on the margins of literature. There is still a bit of discomfort about it; as though to admit its literary worth is to somehow relegate real ‘art’. Thankfully much has changed over the years in this regard, and much of that has to do with these ten books. At its best, crime writing holds up a mirror to society and to the public and private ordeals of individuals. It gives us access to the warped and the depraved, but also to the people who are charged with bringing these people to justice.

Any such list is entirely subjective (personally, I can’t abide Sherlock Holmes) but these are the books I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to anyone interested in crime and mystery writing.

>10 Postmortem – Patricia Cornwell

It’s unusual that a crime writer gets it right first time out of the gate, but Patricia Cornwell did just that with her first scalpel-sharp Scarpetta mystery. While the forensic detail is not quite as gruesome as in her later, less impressive, works, there is an amazing sense of foreboding and unease in Postmortem. As Scarpetta realises just how alone and vulnerable she is, the reader can’t help but be sucked in to the sense of dread and paranoia. Now known as a bestselling machine, it’s sometimes hard to remember that this book won an unprecedented four major crime awards on publication and rewrote the serial killer novel just a year after The Silence of the Lambs had given the genre its rules.

>9 A Taste for Death – PD James

PD James’s curiously anachronistic crime novels have always felt a little out of time, which is why she is the perfect bridge between the golden age and the more psychologically acute novels of the latter half of the twentieth century. Her writing is never short of elegant and she is always able to evoke a place and a scene with such quieting menace that you’re never sure what’s coming next. I could have chosen any number of her books, but A Taste for Death has all the classic elements of James’s superlative novels.

>8 Perfume – Patrick Suskind

Probably the finest ever depiction of scent in world fiction, Perfume remains one of the most understated of serial killer novels. Despite a body count of 25, the murders tend to be alluded to – and the gap between the first and second is a matter of several years. However the danger remains ever-present. Patrick Süskind keeps you waiting for the profoundly amoral Jean-Baptiste Grenouille to explode with violence, and then when it comes it is described in less detail than aroma of a flower. It is a disturbing effect, and one that cannot fail to chill the heart of any reader.

>7 Black and Blue – Ian Rankin

Black and Blue’s appearance in 1997 marked the real arrival of Ian Rankin on the crime scene. Though Inspector John Rebus and his myriad personal problems had been in print for 10 years, it was this tale of politics, serial killers old and new, and gangsters that proved his breakthrough. A murky masterpiece, it set new heights for modern police procedurals, and with it brought the delights of Rebus to a whole new audience.

>6 Wash this Blood Clean from my Hands – Fred Vargas

Bar none, Fred Vargas is the best crime writer currently working today, and so far, this is her masterpiece. It’s hard to describe just why this is such a special book. Yes, there is an element of the great cop dramas, yes there is the oddness of Twin Peaks, yes there are great characters; but explaining how she gets the atmosphere and the erudition into her works seemingly by stealth is so much more difficult. You read this book breathless, both in reader-ly appreciation of the plot and pacing, but also in thrall to the sense of place and strangeness that Vargas places on her scenes.

>5 Strangers on a Train – Patricia Highsmith

Her Ripley novels rather overshadow her other work, but I believe that this really is her finest hour. From a disarmingly simple premise – two men who meet at random decide to kill each other’s bête Highsmith forges a tale where the constant thought that Guy might give in to his violent impulses thrums loudly in the background. It’s impossible not to be gripped, especially when Highsmith turns up the tension towards the end. Superlative stuff.

>4 American Tabloid – James Ellroy

If anyone has tried to shift the crime novel into the literary light, it’s James Ellroy. He is uncompromising, difficult and occasionally impenetrable (see The Cold Six Thousand), but his use of language is thrilling, his attention to voice unmatched and his plots tightly woven around the skein of history. American Tabloid leads up to the assassination of JFK, but skilfully avoids falling into the typical conspiracy style thriller. American Tabloid tells the underground stories, the people who wield power and those they use to make sure they retain it. Mesmerising at times, Ellroy is one of the world’s best writers.

>3 The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson

The most shocking, terrifying read you’re ever likely  to come across, The Killer Inside Me is the ultimate serial killer novel; visceral, chilling and with a moral compass that’s spinning all out of control. Thompson is, rightly, considered the king of pulp fiction, but this is so flagrantly and nastily a different kind of book that had gone before, that it deserves a place all of its own.

>2 Roseanna – Sjowall and Wahloo

I could have picked any of the Martin Beck series of novels by husband and wife crime writing team Sjowall and Wahloo. Ten books written over the course of ten years, the series has everything you could ask of crime writing. It is faithful to the jobs that the police actually do, realistic, mordantly funny, gripping, brimming with characters you care passionately for and situations which make you think rather than just rush through the pages. I chose Roseanna because it’s the first in the series and you get the most out of Beck if you read his cases chronologically. The basis of pretty much all modern crime fiction, Sjowall and Wahloo remain one of the most important writers of the last 50 years.

>1 The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler

While he has many rivals, Philip Marlowe simply is the coolest, hippest detective in print – and The Big Sleep is his first and slickest outing. Marlowe narrates a murder plot in such a deadpan, wise-acre style, that it’s like listening to the most entertaining bar-fly you’ve ever met. But below the bravado and the machismo, lies a character with real depth and humanity, something that Raymond Chandler manages to tease out of the story without letting up the brilliant pacing of the novel.

The plot is famously labyrinthine. Philip Marlowe is hired by old, wheelchair-bound General Sternwood to break a suspected blackmail case. It’s a routine job made all the more complicated by the wild carousing of the General’s two errant daughters. Caught up in a plot that starts with illegal pornography being sold through an antiquarian bookshop and graduates to multiple murder, it’s endlessly inventive and shows a seamier side to the American dream just as surely as The Great Gatsby.

Raymond Chandler’s turn of phrase alone is worthy of his entry into the pantheon of great writers – surely no one else could have written ‘dead men weigh heavier than broken hearts’– and in The Big Sleep he marries this with a tale that perfectly suits the slightly grubby, slightly beat  Marlowe. Put simply, it is the best crime novel ever written.